Also what is a "dirty save game"?
That would be a game that has had your mod 'saved in it'.
You must use a clean save game that has never had your mod activated when you saved it.
What you are describing happened in Fallout. And it had to do with Navmeshes breaking. Usually regenerating them would fix it. And make sure you use the optimization option to clean up a dirty navmesh. (and go back afterwards and readd some bits that were deleted that you really want)
Sometimes converting your ESP to an ESM would work too. But this is a new game so it may have different rules for fixing the problem.